Syllabi available for download from the Umbra Institute website only with the purpose of informing students and advisers about course content. All rights are reserved. ​ FSST/HIST/SOC 350 The History and Culture of Food in Italy Course Syllabus Spring 2020 Instructor: Olivier de Maret, Ph.D. ​ Credits: 3 ​ Contact Hours: 45 ​ Prerequisites: None ​ Class Hours: TBA ​ Office Hours: TBA ​ Course Type: Standard Course ​ Lab Fee: 120 € ​ Course Description What can food history teach us about contemporary culture? In this course, we will explore the history ​ ​ of food in Italy as a gateway to understanding present Italian culture. By examining the factors that have shaped Italian food, cuisine, and taste, the variations in eating habits of different socio-economic classes, and the essential role played by food in constructing Italian identities, we will shed light on fundamental patterns in Italian history and society. This exploration will lead us to consider processes of social and cultural exchange, political and religious influence, and economic and scientific development. Through a mix of discussions, readings, source analyses, workshops, projects, and a field trip we will investigate Italian food and culture from Antiquity to the present. After the completion of this course, students will have acquired a specific set of historical skills as a result of having developed a critical understanding of food history, an interdisciplinary approach to the study of Italian culture and society, and a framework for analyzing Italian history. Community Archiving Project As part of this course, you will contribute to one of the Umbra Institute’s long-term academic endeavors, the Urban Food Mapping & Community Archiving Project. As we talk about how historians make arguments in narrative form from primary and secondary sources, we will pay close attention to the archives that historians use. Food was for a long time seen as unworthy of historians’ attention. By collecting menus from local restaurants—food trucks, fast casual joints, everyday eateries, and Perugia’s finest restaurants—you will (in a small way) actively seek to rectify archival silences. The material you collect will then be available both online and in a special archive that Perugia’s Augusta 1 Syllabi available for download from the Umbra Institute website only with the purpose of informing students and advisers about course content. All rights are reserved. ​ Library has created for us. These materials will become part of Perugia and Umbria’s cultural patrimony and will provide English and Italian primary sources for future food historians. Learning Objectives By the end of the course, students will be able to: 1. identify some changes in how Italians have eaten over the last three millennia; ​ 2. summarize connections between Umbria’s culinary past and larger themes in Italian and world ​ history, with particular attention to social constructions of identity, class, gender, and race; 3. distinguish between primary and secondary sources; ​ 4. analyze different kinds of primary sources—texts, objects, and images—for their meaning; ​ 5. integrate primary and secondary sources on the environmental, sociocultural, and economic ​ factors in Italian food history into an argument; 6. generate a “usable past”: build a community-engaged archive and communicate your research ​ about various aspects of contemporary food systems using twenty-first-century tools while practicing systematic, ethical, and public-facing scholarship. Course Materials Readings—A course reader is available at the local copy shop. See “Umbra Institute Course Materials - ​ Textbooks and Readers” handout provided in the orientation folder for more information. At the end of the document are the complete bibliographical references for the excerpts found in your reader. Assessment Course journal 40% Midterm exam 30% Presentation 15% Essay 15% Grading Letter grades for student work are based on the following percentage scale: Letter Grade Numerical Student Range Score Performance Equivalent A 93% - 100% Exceptional A- 90% - 92% Excellent B+ 87% -89% B 83% - 86% Superior B- 80% - 82% C+ 77% - 79% C 73% - 76% Satisfactory C- 70% - 72% D+ 67% - 69% D 63% - 66% Low Pass 2 Syllabi available for download from the Umbra Institute website only with the purpose of informing students and advisers about course content. All rights are reserved. ​ D- 60% - 62% F 59% or less Fail (no credit) Course Requirements Grades are based on a course journal, a midterm exam, a presentation, and an essay. Course Journal (40%)—Students will be provided with a notebook at the start of the semester, which they ​ will use as a personal space through which to take notes and reflect on course material and ideas. In-class assignments (e.g. summaries of assigned readings, analyses of primary sources, mental maps, reflections, predictive exercises) will be regularly scheduled in the course journals, which will be graded twice during the semester (weeks 7 and 13). Each of these checks is worth 20% of the final grade, for a total of 40%. Midterm Exam (30%)—The midterm exam will cover all topics presented in the first half of the course ​ and will consist of short-answer questions and an essay. The exam will last approximately 90 minutes to complete and is closed book/closed notes. Presentation (15%)—In groups, students will present a source analysis of a menu gathered during the ​ semester, as part of the Community Archiving: The Menu Project. For this, they will need to collect a hard copy of a menu in Perugia, analyze the language used, contextualize it by relating it to course material, and reflect on this overall archiving experience. Their menu will then be preserved as an archival record thus allowing students to take part in a concrete project that will enrich Perugia’s history and provide a database for future students and researchers. Essay (15%)—In a final 5-page, double-spaced, essay due on the last day of class, students will use ​ primary and secondary documents (i.e. at least the menu(s) collected for the archiving project and 3 secondary sources from the library and/or the course reader) to build a historical argument that answers the following question: Based on this semester’s historical exploration of Italian food culture, can we talk of a unified Italian cuisine today or is it more relevant to talk about the regional cuisines of Italy? Attendance Policy Class attendance and participation in all course activities is mandatory. Students are allowed two “free” ​ ​ absences, which do not need to be justified. It is the students’ responsibility to save these ​ absences in case of real necessity (sickness or any other unforeseen circumstances that may prevent students from being in class or attending a required activity). Each additional absence, ​ unless for a very serious reason, will lower the students’ grade by one grade level (i.e. a final grade of a B+ would be lowered to a B). If students miss class or a required class activity, they are responsible for obtaining notes from other students and/or for meeting the professor during office hours. It is also the policy of the Institute that any student who has eight or more absences automatically fails the class. Except in the case of medical emergencies, absences are not accepted when tests are scheduled; tests cannot be made up. Furthermore, scheduled times and dates indicated for exams, quizzes, ​ oral presentations, and any other graded assignments cannot be changed for any reason. Even ​ if more sections of the same class are activated, students may only take exams during the scheduled times and dates for the section they are enrolled in. Presence during mandatory course activities is especially important for student performance in class. Missing a required activity such as the field trip, unless for a very serious reason that is 3 Syllabi available for download from the Umbra Institute website only with the purpose of informing students and advisers about course content. All rights are reserved. ​ communicated to the professor and the Academic Director in a timely manner, will lower students’ final grade by one grade level (i.e. a final grade of a B+ would be lowered to a B). Academic Integrity All forms of cheating (i.e. copying during exam either from a fellow student or making unauthorized use of notes) and plagiarism (i.e. presenting the ideas or words of another person for academic evaluation without acknowledging the source) will be handled according to the Institute Academic Policy, which can be found in the Umbra Institute Academic Policies and Conduct Guidelines. Classroom Policy Please refrain from computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices during class time or during course activities. Active class participation is part of students’ final grades. Students are expected to follow the policy of the Institute and demonstrate the appropriate respect for the historical premises that the school occupies. 4 Syllabi available for download from the Umbra Institute website only with the purpose of informing students and advisers about course content. All rights are reserved. ​ Schedule of Topics, Readings, Exercises, Activities, and Assignments WEEK ​ 1 COURSE INTRODUCTION ​ ​ ​ Course overview and discussion of food and identity After reviewing course policies and assignments, students describe a dish that represents them, which serves to illustrate and introduce course themes. Describing and analyzing historical sources and the Community Archiving Project Raw (Primary) Sources: Rossetti menu vs Contemporary menu. Cooked (Secondary) Sources: Jurafsky, “How to Read a Menu,” 2015, pp. 7-20. Zhen, “Menu Analysis,” 2019, pp. 46-47. Manoff, “Theories of the Archive from Across the Disciplines,” 2014, pp. 9–25. Possible Assessment: In course journals: Think about what different Perugia archives’ collecting missions ​ might be. Talk about silences in the archives and how to rectify them. WEEK ​ 2 ROMAN FOOD (753 BCE – 476 CE) ​ ​ ​ ​ The Romans and their food culture Raw (Primary) Sources: Excerpts from Cato (farm management), Galen (food properties), citations and photographs on truffles.